Butterflies
by LookAtMyShoes
Summary: They're all sorts of shapes and sizes and colors, swirling around in the air like a tornado of parachute clad mosquitoes. ;Brittany/Santana; Fluff.


I haven't written anything for my OTP in forever, so I think this was necessary. SANTANA'S HOMOISM IS COMPLETELY CANON NOW, GUISE.

**Disclaimer: **I own absolutely nothing.

_Butterflies_

There are a lot things that are worth doing on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of June. Like taking advantage of swimming pools in the backyards of daughters with doctors for fathers, blue balling Puck, or uselessly (but not so uselessly) busting out the bikinis for summer and having a potato gun war with weapons stolen from Santana's little brothers. Butterflies, unfortunately, don't make the list and Santana won't hesitate to be the one wielding the scissors when that idea lands on the cutting room floor.

Some of her hair tumbles down as she removes her sunglasses from the top of her head and slides them over her eyes, staring squeamishly at the entrance sign to the nearest butterfly sanctuary in Dayton, Ohio, car keys still dangling from the tips of her fingers as a last desperate grasp of hope that Brittany will change her mind.

"Britt, we can still go catch a movie or something instead, I mean I wouldn't mind -" she starts, but stops midway through her sentence when she sees Brittany staring at her, mouth frozen in a silent gasp. Her blue eyes are aimed right at the top of Santana's head, shining in the summer sun and she looks like she's just seen Jesus.

"Oh. My. God," she punctuates, gaze never wavering, and Santana's starting to panic.

"What? What is it?" Santana splutters, arms stiffly bent at the elbow as she comically attempts to roll her eyes back far enough to see the top of her own head. Brittany doesn't move, nor does she answer. "B. What. Is it," she mumbles through her teeth, as if the movement of talking would provoke whatever Brittany sees to devour and decapitate her.

"Shhhh," Brittany holds a finger to her own lips, creeping closer to Santana slightly hunched over like a ninja Quasimodo. Which would be adorable, because Brittany never seems to notice her lacking stealth, but Santana can't be bothered by Brittany's cutesy antics when she's staring like that. She moves that same finger to hover it above Santana's head as a makeshift perch and Santana would stamp her foot if she wasn't so focused on swallowing the thick lump in her throat and trying to kickstart her body into doing those involuntary action things it's supposed to do. Like breathing.

A second later, the look of wonder on Brittany's face is gone and she's pouting as something begins crawling along Santana's forehead, between her eyes and down the slope of her nose.

Santana blinks three or four times before she's able to gasp and flail her arms until she catches Brittany's shoulders. "Britt, Britt, B, Brittany, what the fuck is that, get that thing off my _face_-"

"It's an Eastern Black Swallowtail," Brittany replies easily, holding out her finger again in another attempt to get it to migrate from Santana to her.

Santana's eyes both roll inward until she's cross-eyed, staring at too many legs and antennae to be anywhere near her face and she takes a series of short, quick breaths, fingernails digging into Brittany's shoulders while the other girl's tongue peaks out of the corner of her mouth as she works on her mission to catch the butterfly as humanely as she can.

"Get it off, get it off, _get it off_," the repeated phrase barely smears out of her mouth in separate words, they all meld together as she says them faster and more desperately. "_Please_, Brittany, get that winged demon off -" she says one more last time, and just as Brittany's finally getting it to crawl onto the tip of her finger, it flies off into the gentle breeze in a fluttering blur of black and blue, "…me."

Pouting, Brittany watches it fly away and Santana's left eye twitches as the lingering, tingling feeling of its wiry legs continues to ghostly tickle her nose. She molds herself to the side of Brittany's body, the blonde's left arm clutched in both of Santana's as the crazed look in her eyes casts a thousand curses upon the quickly disappearing butterfly.

Regardless of being unable to catch it, Brittany's oddly content as she leans her head on Santana's shoulder, watching the bluish speck with a small smile on her face in deep contrast to the look of horror Santana has beside her. She clings tighter to Brittany's arm as it completely disappears behind a thicket of trees like she's just watched herself die in the future and returned to the present to knowledgeably prevent her own demise.

It's all much too dramatic for the first five minutes of visiting a damn butterfly garden about an hour away from Lima and Santana is wracking her scattered brain for any ideas to distract Brittany from this horrible day trip.

"That was nice," Brittany murmurs, hilariously oblivious to the trauma Santana has suffered no more than a foot away from her. Leave it to Brittany to interpret uncharacteristic clinginess to Santana being overly affectionate.

Much to Santana's poorly hidden horror, the Eastern Black Swallowtail escapee was a mere smidgen of the massive swarm flying around inside of the sanctuary. What's worse is that they're not even in one cluster; they're spread all over the place so Santana has to keep constant watch and she doesn't think her heart's going to stay inside of her chest for much longer considering she's barely made it past the entrance.

They're all sorts of shapes and sizes and colors, swirling around in the air like a tornado of parachute clad mosquitoes.

Her eyes widen as she imagines them bombing the ground below with little butterfly spawn, _caterpillars, _squirming all around her in a chaotic ocean of fuzzy worms. Breathing stops for a moment as her stomach twists.

Brittany, on the other hand, is enthralled. Santana figures butterflies must be something holy to her because she can't fathom any other reason as to why someone would find fascination in creatures as disgusting as these. She takes a deep breath to prepare herself, glancing left and right as she does so as to prevent herself from swallowing one or causing them to gravitate toward her with the intake of her breath, and then Brittany's threading their hands together, dragging Santana along with her, blissfully unaware.

The tightening below her stomach is progressively getting worse and she wonders if Brittany even notices how worked up she is over this horrible, stupid day trip idea. But all of a sudden the inside of her hand is hollow as Brittany lets go and prances over to one of the blossoming trees a few yards away, and it's so weighed down with winged monsters that Santana could puke, except Brittany's got one of those smiles on her face.

She's smiling, her arms out wide, and she's spinning before she's even made it all the way over to the tree. The butterflies all rise at the disturbance, little wings working against the resistance of the air, and they're flying around Brittany like a flock of birds. All rising in an upward spiral and it doesn't look like they're trying to escape her, it looks like they're complementing her. Revolving around her in the air, flying because she can't, like they all have this mutual understand of what being free really is.

Suddenly she doesn't care where they are and she doesn't care that Brittany is incapable of understanding that butterflies are one of Santana's most horrific phobias. She simply watches her like that until most of the butterflies have flown off to somewhere more peaceful and Brittany stops twirling. Everything sort of comes to a standstill and when Santana realizes the moment is over, it dawns on her that she's staring. It dawns on her that she's just watched some kind of mini metaphorical replay of her entire life. It hits her straight between the eyes that Brittany understands more than anyone else that butterflies scare her to death.

Brittany's arms drop down to her sides and her head quirks a little to the right, lopsided smile shining at Santana as she waves her over with a 'come on!' Doesn't even notice how beautiful a moment that was, doesn't notice how beautiful she _is._

She smiles back, wanting to both laugh and cry at the openly confused grin Brittany is throwing back at her and that tightening below Santana's stomach from before becomes lighter, fluttering higher up into her throat and she finally stops trying to swallow them back down as she runs over to join her, pinkies twisted around one another.

Butterflies.


End file.
